9. Kirin
Kirin
On Monday, Kirin settled into his seat, freshly showered and ready for their team roundtable and film review.
Harrison slid into the seat beside him with Leon close behind, taking his usual seat across the aisle from them.
Around them, everyone was in their own little world.
Coach Odom was a fan of keeping his team focused from the second their season started.
That meant everyone got into their routine during practice just like they would for pregame.
It looked different for each player, but it was more common than not to see noise-canceling headphones and heads bobbing.
Kirin opened his texts, ignoring the rants from Laurel and deleting the offers from unknown numbers offering to hook up with him.
There were several texts from Maya asking what he was doing messing around with Rose, when he was available, if he wanted to meet up.
Seemed her annoyance at him being seen with Rose was less important than servicing her libido.
He ignored those. She’d find someone else.
Instead, he opened his thread with Rose and smirked at the photo he’d put as her icon. One of the few he took at Rita’s last night before they left, that scrunched-nose smile he liked, and the dollop of whipped cream he tapped on her nose as payback for her doing it to him.
Kirin
I try to listen to a new playlist every game. Got any recommendations?
She didn’t make him wait for a response, and he swallowed a sigh when those little gray dots popped up on the screen.
Rose
Are you asking me for a mixtape like it’s the eighties?
Kirin
Would you record it off the radio for me?
Rose
Not when I can just send you a playlist, dork.
Bronco Beats - Classic Mix
Kirin
This is the playlist from the other night?
Rose
Yep.
Kirin
Do you have one for your pregame ritual?
Rose
Yep.
No, you can’t have it.
Kirin
Next game?
Rose
Maybe, if you’re good.
He chuckled to himself, and she dropped off after that message, no doubt starting her own practice on the other side of campus.
It was progress, though. She was opening up, and he hoped she would continue that when they were in person.
Kirin pressed on the playlist and tucked his headphones over his ears, letting the first song waft through his brain: “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey. Then he tapped on the SnapSocial app.
His last post was wildly different from just about every other post on his account. The same photo as her icon on his phone. He’d liked it so much he posted it to his non-school social account too. Not a move he’d ever made before, so probably another Neanderthal move, but he didn’t care.
Both avenues would get them plenty of attention, fuel the comments, and increase the interest they needed for their project.
Or at least that’s what he kept telling himself.
Rose’s account was empty, while he curated his SnapSocial with photos going back to his freshman year.
Probably a byproduct of switching schools; so whatever she might have posted while at Westmont was gone.
Her Instagram wasn’t much different, but since it wasn’t linked to the university, there were photos of her family.
A woman covered in smudges of grease with the same auburn hair as Rose and Paulie had to be her mom.
The same logo Rose wore that day at St. James Sweets was on the back wall just behind a burgundy four-door Jeep with a Westmont Alumni sticker on the back window.
Rose’s public social was a black hole for him. He spent three hours the other day scrolling through her account after she accepted his follow request. He tried to understand her based on snippets of her life, and he’d found out more than he expected.
He knew she loved her sisters from how she talked about them, but they popped up with funny faces and unimpressed looks in the photos.
A brunette with bangs and a lopsided smile appeared during high school and then dropped off in college.
He guessed she had enlisted because a few photos showed her in fatigues.
Rose tagged her as @KenzDoll, and her account was private, but her profile photo showed her and Rose cheek-to-cheek.
When he hit the bottom of Rose’s posts, he’d delved into looking up her stats and the records she broke at Westmont.
Kirin smiled at the photo of her on his screen for another second and then scrolled down to the comments just to see what all the fuss and notifications were about. It didn’t take long to see the trend.
J_Okashi: UR Hot!!!
M_Hill9: Westmont trash
D_Hoskins: Get it, boi!
J_Regg: Ain’t this your girl, P? @P_Goodwin3
The account belonged to Preston Goodwin—Westmont’s quarterback and Rose’s ex-boyfriend—and he hovered over it.
He ignored it for now. Rose had untagged herself and maybe blocked her ex on her social accounts.
There was nothing on her account with Preston Goodwin.
He knew that. All Leon found when he first looked up Rose were tags in other people’s accounts and he’d confirmed it. He started scrolling again.
P_Mendoza8: I’d tap that
J_Hitabee: Sexy gurllll
G_Johnston: Typical @M_Taggert2
L_Weston: Traitor
B_Gilhart: @P_Goodwin3
H_Katerin: Fuuuuuuckkk Callaghan!!!! Get it!
Kirin paused his scrolling and went back up to the little thread of responses after M_Taggert2 was tagged.
A_Kelly3: New team, same bitch
J_Gilhart: Still a whore, shocker
K_Jervas: The team finally matches her personality, loser LOL
J_Gilhart: What a waste of a fine piece of ass, even if he is a fucking Griffin
With a raised brow and “Come On Eileen” pulsing in his ears, Kirin tapped on M_Taggert2.
It took one look at her grid to figure out that was Margot Taggert, the team captain for Westmont Women’s Soccer.
He clicked through the other handles tagged: G_Johnston was Gwen Johnston, who took over as their main striker now that Rose was at Montgomery.
The others were all players on Westmont’s women’s soccer team as well.
He blocked them all, making sure he looked up their followers as well and blocked any other teammates he could find.
Then he went back to Preston Goodwin and the two people who tagged him, blocking each of them before he looked up Goodwin and scrolled through the rival quarterback’s photos.
It didn’t look all that different from Kirin’s account, but there was a stunning lack of personal photos.
He was all business, whereas Kirin tried to keep a good balance to show he knew how to meet the needs of his team and have a life.
Preston’s tagged photos were a different story.
A ton of photos with smiling girls, several from the last year with Margot Taggert that had his brows rising.
He didn’t know when Rose and Goodwin ended things; she said last year, but the first photo with Margot hanging off his arm was from last November.
He squinted at the photo, at the way Goodwin was standing there smiling, but it wasn’t engaged.
His attention was on something past the person taking the photo.
His brows lowered in annoyance, maybe anger.
Kirin didn’t know the guy’s face well enough, but his body language spoke volumes.
Margot certainly looked thrilled with her megawatt smile and perfectly done blonde hair as she pressed into Goodwin’s side like she could fuse them together with a little more pressure.
Plenty of girls did that to him; they loved to press into his arm as if having their tits on either side of his biceps would make him realize he wanted them.
It was an act of desperation. Goodwin was leaning away even with his arm wrapped around her, his shoulder tense like he wanted to fight or at least square up with someone.
Whatever was going on past the photo taker, he didn’t like it.
A set of fingers snapped in front of his eyes, and Kirin’s head flicked up.
He tugged his headphones off while blinking until Harrison’s face came into focus.
There was a concerned look on his friends face when he glanced between the phone and Kirin, and Leon was leaning over the aisle toward him, equally concerned.
“You good, man?” Harrison asked, and the inflection told him they’d probably both tried to get his attention a few times.
“Oh, yeah, I’m good.” He locked his phone and shoved it in his pocket, his attention swiveling to the front of the room where Coach was standing with the rest of the coaching staff.
It felt like an eternity until he was back at his place. The weight of the looks from his friends on his back grew heavier as he crossed the threshold and they made their way to the basement.
“Okay, what’s up with you?” Harrison asked as he dropped onto the couch.
“Tell us what’s going on.” Leon dragged a chair away from the kitchen table and flipped it so he could rest his arms on the back of it. “H said you were blocking people left and right after practice.”
“Just some Westmont people, Rose’s former teammates. They were commenting, and two players tagged her ex.” Kirin scratched his temple. “Do you have any idea what happened between her and Goodwin?”
Leon’s eyebrows rose. “You snooping on your partner?”
Kirin rubbed his hand over his forehead. “Something is going on with her; those comments were just—” He grimaced and shook his head. “What do you know about Preston Goodwin?”
Leon’s eyebrows rose again, and Kirin ignored the look he could feel coming from Harrison, who sat quietly on the couch beside him.
“Grade A asshole on the field. You know he encourages their players to look up all of us and talk about our girls, family, anything to get in our heads. I doubt you’ll get away unscathed this year now that you’ve posted a photo of his ex. ”